Review

Hatsune Miku: Project Diva games tend to fall into one of two different categories. There are the titles that attempt to offer a little extra context and a wider environment to the experience, like Project Mirai DX with its little room and Puyo Puyo game or Project Diva X Live Quest mode, where you attempt to complete certain quests. Then, there are ones that serve as a convenient means of accumulating a library of popular songs and giving people enough options to properly enjoy them. Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Mega Mix falls into that latter category.

Fifteen years ago, in 2005, the last “real” Sakura Wars game was released. Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love introduced Japan to a New York Combat Revue and the promise of new characters for the series, then five years later introduced the rest of the world to the series as a whole. It was a great game that blended visual novel elements, relationship building and thoughtful strategic endeavors into one experience. With Sakura Wars, the reboot set two years after the fifth installment, it at least gets two out of three right.

The Puzzle & Dragons franchise has been a great example of how to adapt a mobile hit into something that makes more sense on traditional gaming platforms. Puzzle & Dragons Z built a compelling progression scheme without relying upon gacha mechanics or pure psychological trickery, and Import Game of the Year 2016Puzzle & Dragons X stepped up its depth and presentation to rival some of the best RPGs on the platform.

Which makes it that much more inexplicable how wildly Puzzle & Dragons Gold misses the mark.

After taking a bit of time off, the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series is back in time for Tokyo, and for a Japanese game, representing itself well for the host country is clearly important. It’s not a good time to phone it in, so it makes sense that this release could draw your eye. How does it manage, given increased expectations? Let’s get into it.

By any given measure, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD is a reclamation project of sorts. Banana Blitz wasn’t a particularly well-received entry at the time, and the intervening years have not seen a late fandom grow around it. So why is it, of all the Super Monkey Ball games, getting a remaster? One potential reason is that decision-makers at Sega thought it had an undiscovered appeal buried under its early motion controls and lack of development focus.

Most of Gust’s Atelier games feel alike. A young woman decides she wants to become an alchemist and goes about honing her skills, proving herself and solving some major problem along the way. Every entry seems to have a priority, be it the exploration elements, item creation, relationships or story, but none of the installments released since Atelier Rorona feel like a step forward. Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout is a great big jump in almost every way.

In most instances, a retro re-release project is about capitalizing on nostalgia. It’s about letting players revisit old favorites on new platforms, and the comfort of the known being preserved for future play. And Sega’s no stranger to that, both with this Sega Ages series and its compilation efforts in general. At least for those of us in the West, though, Sega Ages Ichidant-R is different. It’s an unknown artifact delivered to an audience to let them learn more, and it’s exactly the sort of effort that fans of Japanese games should applaud.

Each console has its own sort of puzzle series connected to them. When someone thinks of a Nintendo system, Picross or Tetris could come to mind. After all, both have made their home there for years. With Sega, another sort was its identifying IP: Columns. Until the Nintendo Switch came along, the worldwide library has been rather incomplete. Columns II never appeared outside of Japan. With Sega Ages: Columns II, people’s library is finally complete.

Nihon Falcom’s The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III is both a continuation and a new chapter. It’s not a fresh start for Rean Schwarzer and company, but it’s a clear inflection point, with a shifting status quo and a new cast of characters. At its core, though, it’s still very much the games that came before it. And for longtime fans of the franchise, a new coat of paint over the same structures is probably just fine.